1. Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure relates to an adaptive search range method for motion/disparity estimation relevant to multiview video coding (MVC) technology.
2. Description of Related Art
Muitiview video is a plurality of images acquired by a plurality of cameras taking images of a same target object and background. Multiview video can provide users with a sense of complete perception by transmitting several views of the target object captured at different angles to the receivers simultaneously. It can also give users vivid information about the scene structure. Moreover, it can provide the capability of 3-D perception by respectively showing two of these frames to the eyes. Multiview video has been widely adopted in various applications, such as 3-D blue-ray disc player, 3-D camcorder, internet protocol television (IPTV), and so on.
Multiview video utilizes the technique of taking images of a same target object and background by multiple cameras. When the number of the captured views is increased, a huge amount of image data will be generated by the multiple cameras. Therefore, how to efficiently code and transmit such huge amount of image data has become an important issue. As a result, multiview video coding (MVC) is developed as an extension profile of H.264/AVC (“Advanced Video Coding for Generic Audiovisual Services,” Joint Video Team of ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG, March 2010), and widely adopted in various applications.
Multiview video is highly related to time vector, and such relation is used to improve coding efficiency. On the other hand, in the dynamic image of the multiview video, when all the cameras are synchronized, the images taken at the same time by each of the camera have high correlations because such images are obtained by taking images of a target object and background having the same condition from different positions. In multiview video coding, the aforementioned correlation can be used to improve coding efficiency.